This Is a Fantastic Graceland West Home

Two interior designers redid this classic Chicago house, and their taste paid off—it just sold for more than a million bucks.

By Dennis Rodkin

Published Sept. 30, 2013

Photo: Dennis Rodkin

List Price: $1,095,000Sale Price: $1,023,483The Property: When two people who specialize in interior design do their own house together, you can count on it to turn out pretty sharp. That was what happened when Cary Filsinger and Scott Yerkey did their house in Graceland West.

The house was already a Chicago classic with original stained-glass windows intact in a brick and stucco facade on a street lined with big trees. In Filsinger and Yerkey’s hands, its interior became a refined space, with timeless rooms handsomely appointed, as the listing photos show.

This is all well and good for living in it, and turned out to be even better for selling. When the couple “took an opportunity to move to Palm Springs,” says their listing agent, Kevin Tatum, “we priced it aggressively, and the fact that [the home]was done with designers’ taste made it very desirable on the market.”

Now, it wasn’t priced quite as aggressively as it was at first—see “Price Points” below.

It’s a four-bedroom, with three on the second floor and a lovely master bedroom above, in the former attic. The kitchen, tasteful and full of custom cabinetry, was a slight disappointment to some potential buyers, Tatum says, because although it looks great, “it’s not big.”

The lot is extra-wide, 30 feet compared to Chicago’s standard 25-foot lot, and on a street that has the advantage of not going through from Clark to Ashland, so it’s about as calm as a city neighborhood street can get. And speaking of city neighborhoods: Graceland West, which is immediately west of grand old Graceland Cemetery, is a delightful one, near lots of magnets like all the fun shopping, dining, and entertainment on Southport. It has easy transportation routes, but still manages to feel like a sleepy small town.

The house went on the market (a second time) on June 10 and was under contract 17 days later. The deal closed September 6; the buyers aren’t yet identified in public records.

Price Points: The house first went on the market in May, at $1.185 million. It went off the market a month later and came back with Tatum as the agent, in June asking seven percent less: $1.095 million. The final sale price is 93 percent of that latter asking price, and 86 percent of the short-lived original price.